Today we’re excited to announce a dramatic new update to some core features of the Bible App™ for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch—available now in the iTunes App Store. We’ve been listening to your feedback. (And we’ve been experimenting some on our own.) We’ve poured a crazy amount of work into the latest enhancements for the Bible App for iOS. We think you’re really going to enjoy what you find here:

Slide Out Menu. (Pictured) Just tap the menu icon at the top for quick access to those Bible App features you use most: Bible, Plans, Bookmarks, Notes, and more. Just one more tap takes you anywhere you want to go, including the all-new Today view…

Today View. (Pictured) Right at the top of the new slide out menu, Today displays the brand new, easy-to-share Verse of the Day, the last passage you were reading, the new Profile viewer (described below), and links to today’s readings for all of your active Plans.

Profile Viewer. Now you can review and adjust most of your account settings on a single screen. Specify the name your account will display, change your profile picture, or update your contact information. Even browse your Friends’ profiles and the profiles of the people following you.

Bug Fixes. We addressed some specific issues related to audio Bibles and made a few other adjustments. And with this release (as always), we tweaked the Bible App to enhance performance wherever we could.

Offline WiFi Downloads. If new updates are available for any offline versions you’ve already downloaded, the Bible App checks to see if you’re connected to WiFi. If you are—assuming you have this handy feature activated—the Bible App will automatically update your versions for you, completely in the background. You don’t have to do anything, and you’ll always have the latest versions of all your offline Bibles.

You’ll find all of these features in the new Bible App update on all Apple devices we support: iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. But tomorrow, we’ll share some sweet tweaks we added to help you get even more out of your Bible App experience on iPad. In the meantime, consider visiting YouVersion’s Support website to make sure that the Bible App on your device is doing everything it can. And once you’ve tried out the new Bible App, please let us know what you think on Facebook and Twitter!

Whatever iOS (Apple) device you have, instructions for how you can get your Bible App update are below.

As Christ-followers, there’s a certain joy associated with Resurrection Sunday. We imagine the rolled-away stone, and we’re reminded of Christ’s victory over death and our new life in Him. We read how He appeared to His friends, and we recall that He is with us even now.

While Christ’s resurrection is reason to celebrate, it’s important that we approach not only the empty tomb, but also the cross. Holy Week is an opportunity for us to spend time considering the depth of God’s love for us and the sacrifice He made on our behalf. Sometimes, though, it seems we’re so grateful for the empty grave that we skip through the Garden…offering only a passing glance toward our weeping Savior.

YouVersion offers two Holy Week reading plans:The Story of Easter walks you through the events leading up to Jesus’ death, and Words of Jesus During Passion Week allows you to explore the stories Jesus shared with His disciples along the way. Through our reading, we can sense what it must have been like to hear Jesus’ explanation of what the next days will bring. We can experience Peter’s burning shame as he’s called out as a disloyal coward. Our heart will shatter with Mary’s as we watch Jesus crumble to the ground again and again. We’ll fear the whip and, perhaps most importantly, we’ll remember that we are wielding the whip . . . reason enough to hold our joy until the morning.

We can, of course, choose to celebrate Resurrection Day without thinking about the days leading up to it. But how much more freedom might we feel if we’ve truly considered the depravity Christ took from us? How much more honor do we pay our Savior by stopping to meditate on his sacrifice? If we allow ourselves to experience the deepest dark, the light becomes more wonderful.

A lot can happen in just one minute. We’re pleased to share with you that much of that includes people engaging with God’s Word. Here’s just a little snapshot of what’s going on right now, during every minute of every day, throughout the YouVersion community all over the world.

Recently, you may have occasionally noticed outages as you tried to connect to the Bible App™ or the all-new YouVersion.com, whether you were trying to follow along in church, to access one of your Reading Plans, or even simply to read your favorite version of the Bible.

Please accept our apology.

If you’ve been an active part of the YouVersion community, then you probably know our simple mission: To help as many people as possible read the Bible, no matter where they live or what language they prefer. And with your passion to share God’s Word, the continuing success of that mission has eclipsed our highest hopes: the Bible App has been installed on more than 40 million unique devices.

Let us assure you: The connection problems you’ve experienced lately are entirely unacceptable to us. We’re taking aggressive steps not only to ensure that you won’t have simply a basic connection, but full, reliable access to all of the many tools and services that the Bible App and YouVersion have to offer.

We’re doing everything we can to make sure the Bible App will be there… whenever and wherever you want to connect with God’s Word.

The Bible App™ is now immediately available on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet! Visit BlackBerry App World to get yours. The Bible App for PlayBook has all the same great features you already enjoy on other platforms, now optimized to make the most of this exciting device. Here are just a few examples:

Bible Search. Filter your Bible searches, showing only Old Testament, New Testament, Apocrypha, or a single book. Even sort your results.

Sign up with Facebook. Save time by instantly signing up for your free YouVersion account using your Facebook login.

Once you’ve downloaded the Bible App onto your PlayBook, come visit us on Facebook and Twitter to let us know what you think. And if you know someone else with a PlayBook, please be sure you let them know about this exciting, first-ever release!

Earlier this week, we shared about YouVersion.com’s complete makeover. While many of you in the worldwide YouVersion community have told us you’re loving the cleaner design, some of you have also let us know you’ve been experiencing performance issues, and some of you have even found bugs. Let us assure you: We’re working really hard behind the scenes to address these issues as fast as we can. And each and every day, we’re trying to make the all-new YouVersion.com better and better.

If you haven’t yet tried out the shiny new YouVersion.com, we’d encourage you to go have a look. Besides tools that Bible App users will recognize right away—and its simpler new interface—YouVersion.com has introduced some new features designed specifically to offer you the best Bible-reading experience possible. Here are just a few of the new enhancements we think you’re going to love:

Full Screen Mode. With just one click, you can expand YouVersion.com to cover your entire screen, making the most of your screen real estate. Especially when you’re reading, full screen mode is one of the most comfortable ways you can experience the Bible on an electronic device.

Customizable Fonts. For some time now, the Bible App has offered the ability to select from different typefaces to find the one that’s easiest for you to read. The relaunch of YouVersion.com now brings this same convenience to your desktop. You can also adjust font size up or down, whether it’s to make the words so large they’re crystal clear, or to fit as many words as possible on your screen.

Parallel Reading. Switching to Parallel Reading Mode displays two different Bible versions side by side, letting you easily compare them to each other as you read. Great for deeper Bible study, parallel reading can help you more thoroughly understand what you’re reading.

Please visit YouVersion.com today and explore. And to get the most from your experience, we recommend that you register for your free YouVersion account. We’d love to hear your thoughts about YouVersion.com’s redesign. Please come share your Bible-reading experiences with us on Facebook and Twitter. And be sure to let your friends know about this great new resource!

The last time we updated the Bible App for Windows Phone, we completely rewrote it from scratch. This release, version 2.3, is a major upgrade to Windows Phone “Mango,” designed specifically to bring you the very best of all this platform has to offer. You can find the latest release now at Windows Marketplace for Mobile, featuring all of the following improvements:

True Multitasking. The Mango version of Windows Phone now lets you leave an app open and running as you do something else with a different app. This means that now you can listen to an audio Bible and, even when you switch away from the Bible App, it will keep playing. Listen to an audio Bible with your screen locked—or even with your display turned off to save battery power!

Fast App Switching. More than just multi-tasking, Windows Phone Mango now includes fast app switching, which lets you jump rapidly between tasks. We’ve optimized the Bible App to take full advantage of this handy new feature, so you can leave it running, easily switch to something else for a minute, and then hop back just as quickly.

Custom Start Screen Tiles. With Mango, Windows Phone added a slick new feature that allows you to add non-app tasks to your start screen. Pin a Reading Plan, saved search, or other task to the start screen so you can quickly jump into it. Once you’ve saved a new tile, you can tap directly through to the tasks you use most, right from your start screen!

More Versions than Ever. By the time you read this, the Bible App for Windows Phone will offer more than 200 different versions of the Bible, in 75 languages. Now, whatever version
of the Bible you like, and whatever language you prefer,
chances are good that YouVersion has it.

The Bible App in 5 Languages. Besides English, thanks to YouVersion’s extraordinary community of passionate volunteers, you can now set the Bible App’s interface—all of the menus, buttons, and controls—to display entirely in Russian, German, Swedish, or Korean.

Bug Fixes. We take every opportunity to correct problems and improve performance, and certainly this release is no different. As always, when you find errors in the Bible App (on any platform), please report them to us at our Support website, so we can address them in upcoming releases.

Dashboard Verse of the Day. Now you can set the Bible App for Windows Phone to display a fresh Bible verse every day. At whatever time you choose, each day you’ll receive new inspiration right in your Dashboard, displayed in the last version of the Bible that you were reading.

YouVersion.com is all new! If you’ve visited recently, maybe you saw the “Preview” link at the top. Or if you have a YouVersion account, you might have received an email in February that told you how to get a sneak peek at the website’s new design. Either way, the response was overwhelming and immediate, as many of you tried it out and offered some great feedback. Today we’re pleased to announce the official release of the all-new, completely redesigned YouVersion.com.

You’ll find YouVersion.com has a much cleaner interface, even as it offers many of the features you’ve grown accustomed to in the Bible App:

Bookmarks. Bookmarks are a great way to track and organize passages you want to return to again and again, whether for sharing, memorizing, or reminding yourself of God’s promises. Of course, YouVersion.com already offered Bookmarks, but now they’re much more similar to those in the Bible App.

Highlights. While Bookmarks excel at giving you a place to store your thoughts and helping you keep organized, Highlights are great at drawing your attention back to passages visually. Just as in the Bible App, Highlights let you choose from a variety of colors that suit your purposes (or your mood).

Audio Bibles. Now all of the same audio Bibles you’ve already been enjoying through the Bible App (depending on your device) can take advantage of the fast network connection streaming to your desktop. Make God’s Word the soundtrack to your life while you work. Or even use it to help you absorb more as you read along. Just find the version you want and click play.

And these are just the beginning. We’ll share more tomorrow about some of the other features we think you’ll enjoy at the all-new YouVersion.com. But don’t wait for us! Go to YouVersion.com and check it out for yourself. We want to hear from you. We’ll be bringing you even more new updates and exciting features in the coming weeks, and we’d love for you to let us know what you think on Facebook and Twitter.

The Beta version of the Bible App™ for Windows 8 is one of fewer than 100 apps now available in the Windows Store. And of course as always, the Bible App is 100% free. If you’re running the Windows 8 Consumer Preview on a compatible device, please go check it out. We’d love you to hear from you on Facebook or Twitter!

In this Beta version of the Bible App for Windows 8, you’ll find most of the features you’ve already come to expect from the Bible App on other platforms—now specifically designed to take full advantage of the rich user experience made possible by an exciting new generation of Windows 8 tablet devices!

With Lent now officially upon us, there seems no better time to take up a Bible reading challenge. One way to do that is to get involved with a great initiative like #BigRead12, a Lent Bible reading program from Durham University’s Big Bible Project.

The Big Read 2012 encourages Christians to meet together in house groups to engage with the Bible, knowing that there are others reading the same text at the same time, all over the world. (In 2011, the program had visitors from all sides of the globe.)

The house group material, freely downloadable from the website, offers conversation starters to examine how the realities of the Bible can transform lives. This year, The Big Read focuses on the third book of Tom Wright’s series Lent for Everyone, looking at Mark.

The Big Read team is encouraging people to share the conversations that arise: Tweet about their ideas (using the hashtag #BigRead12), join the Big Read 2012 group on Facebook, and comment on the blog entries that will be appearing throughout.

The Big Read’s coordinator, Dr. Bex Lewis, told us how she first got going with her own daily reading habits:

“I started to build up proper daily reading habits whilst working for Oak Hall (a UK Christian Holiday camp), as I had a number of speakers whose actions were clearly soaked in Biblical thinking…. It took me 3.5 years, but I read the Bible from cover to cover. I don’t want to equate it with ‘positive thinking’, but it helps me see where God is in everything that goes on in my life.

“I love the fact that I can read the Bible wherever I am these days, mixing between the Bible App from YouVersion, WordLive, and other tools for daily Bible readings, and using the Bible App as my Bible in church (whilst tweeting bits of the sermon!). I read far more of it than I ever used to!”